Why do people buy? When you boil it down, there are two reasons why people buy anything.
Fear and Greed. Loss or gain.
In fact, when you look at the Seven Deadly Sins (Greed, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride), Greed isn’t just one of them, it’s the foundation of for most of them: Gluttony, Pride, Lust, and Envy are all greed-based sins. Gluttony is greed of food, Lust is greed of sex, Envy is greed of possessions, and so on.
We see ads for nice cars, nice clothes, good food, expensive watches. We’re told, you need these, you deserve these, people will like you if you have them. You’ll be successful and rich, and able to afford more things like this. We Envy the people who have them, and we are Greedy to have them ourselves.
Even the ads that sell through sex tap into this mindset: if you have/eat/drink this product, hot women will want to have sex with you. And sex — Lust — is one of the most primal Greed urges we’ve got.
Fear is the other driving force. We buy locks because we fear losing what we have (which is fear driven by greed, so it’s a double whammy). We buy safe cars and SUVs because we fear being injured in a crash.
One day, I was flipping through a parenting magazine and saw that every single ad was fear based:
- Buy this baby monitor so you can hear if your child stops breathing.
- Buy this car seat so your baby won’t be hurt in a car accident.
- Buy this sleeping trough so your baby stays on his back and doesn’t die.
It was actually kind of depressing, because all these new mothers were being bombarded, not with just advertising, but frightening thoughts that their tiny new life could be extinguished at the snap of Fate’s fingers. I remember what it was like the first time I was a dad, and I was able to conjure up all these scary images without the help of advertisers. So I can only imagine what it’s like for new mothers to see this, page after page, ad after ad.
As a writer, this is important to know. This is, deep down in the places we don’t talk about, how your customers think. They buy so they can have more of something or prevent the loss of something else. You need to write your copy in a way that draws water from one of these two wells.
Look at your product or service, and figure out why someone would want to buy it. Let’s say you sell synthetic motor oil. It’s fairly expensive compared to regular motor oil, but it lasts longer than regular motor oil. You could write your copy in one of two ways:
- Greed: If you use this motor, you won’t need to change your oil as frequently. Instead of getting your oil changed every 3,000 miles, you change it every 6,000 miles. Instead of spending $250 per year, you’ll only spend $125 per year, which means you’ll put $125 back in your own pocket.
- Fear: Synthetic motor oil last longer and works better than regular motor oil. Cheap motor oils break down more quickly, and results in more wear and tear on your engine. The more wear and tear, the sooner your car will break down. This can result in a very expensive repair, or even an entire engine replacement, which will cost at least $3,000. By using synthetic oil, you’ll save your engine and protect your car from costly repairs.
Greed (Envy/Pride): Drivers who love their fancy, expensive cars put synthetic motor oil into them. If you want people to think your car is just as good as these expensive cars here, you’ll put our oil into your car too.
Unfortunately, appealing to people’s nobler efforts — it’s good for the environment — isn’t the most effective way to get people to buy. They’re not thinking that way. If you ask Prius owners why they bought their car, and most of them will tell you it’s because of gas prices. A very few people will cite the environment as their number 1 reason for buying it. Otherwise, hybrid cars would have been overwhelmingly popular five years ago, and not just a growing trend.
Instead, people bought the Prius because they were afraid gas prices would be very expensive and they didn’t want to pay too much for their gas (Greed and Fear. Double score!) Even today, gas prices and fuel economy are still the number 1 reason for the hybrid’s success. (And just so I don’t sound completely cynical, I will agree that “it’s good for the environment” is a very good reason to buy a hybrid, and probably in the top 3 for most Prius owners.)
So as you write your web copy, see if you can tap into the fear or the greed mindset, even a little, and see if your response rates don’t go up.
If you do, you could become fabulously wealthy. If you don’t, bad things may happen to you.
